14 DAY TRIAL // Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition suggested in a submission to the European Commission that the computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system, as announced by the Globalisation Institute. This submission considers that the bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers prevents competition in the operating system market and is bad for the public interest.
Until now, the Commission has concentrated its anti-monopoly actions against Microsoft's server products and the bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows. This submission comes after the commission won a lawsuit against Microsoft, in the European Court of First Instance.
The bundling of Windows in PCs forces the general customer to pay automatically for the operating system, without having the choice of opting for a different platform. By giving them this option, the consumers could choose a cheaper operating system, or one that offers them the features they are looking for.
Although in the hardware market, standards are created, thus increasing the compatibility between components, on the operating system market things are a little bit different. Software developers keep creating applications for Windows, the mainstream operating system, not because it offers too many advantages, but because it virtually forces the computer users to buy their operating system by bundling it with PCs. Of course, it could be uninstalled after the purchase, but that would mean throwing a sum of money away. If there were more operating systems, independent software developers would create their apps by using tools and programming libraries that could enable the software to work on all the systems, not just on one. This way, we could see programs that run fine on Windows work well on Linux or other platforms, too.
Unbundling Windows will lower the costs of buying, running and maintaining a computer. The Commission recommended that all desktop and laptop computers sold within the European Union should be sold without operating systems. This would give birth to a more active competition, and increase consumer options.